Fridae

Breathtakingly beautiful Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai may hold
the record for the person with the most number of websites dedicated
to her. But her English-speaking turn in Mistress Of Spice
lacks all the ingredients of a good performance.

In it, she plays a psychic woman who runs a magical spice shop
in San Francisco. Her spices can cure any form of ailments, as long
as (a) she never uses them for her own gain and (b) she never falls
in love. Of course, everyone falls in love in movies. So as you
can expect, the sudden appearance of Dylan McDermott, a handsome
architect, in her life means that she is in trouble. Her magic starts
to go haywire, spelling disaster for all her regular customers.

For the most part, Aishwarya is beautiful but unbelievable. Her
unconvincing performance does not help the already flimsy movie
one bit. It just feels like a half-baked Chocolat without
Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. There is also little chemistry
between Aishwarya and Dylan, who seems distant and distracted. Based
on a novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, it tries to translate
the already complex genre of magical realism onto screen, but fails.